Zanis says he plans to pass along the messages people write on the crosses to the victims’ families.

But this is not the first time Zanis has trekked across the country to honor victims of mass shootings. He visited Colorado to deliver crosses memorializing victims of the Columbine High School shooting as well as the Aurora theatre shooting. He delivered crosses after the Newton school shooting:

When his father-in-law was murdered twenty years ago, Zanis stopped building houses and started building crosses.

“We are all as a nation, suffering over here,” Zanis said in 2012. “I want to let them know that Greg Zanis cares.”